When
Thu 8 Feb 2024
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As three unemployed coal miners re-enter the job market, they discover a very different China from the one they knew.
The Hedonists is vibrant, gorgeously shot (by cinematographer Yu Likwai), and gently tragic.
In the Shanxi province of China, the workers of a rundown coalmine receive bad news: the mine is closing and all workers will be laid off. With braised pork as their severance pay, three miners set off to find new jobs in a newly transformed China.
Curator's Note
Dynamically shot by cinematographer Nelson Yu, who has been a career-long collaborator of Jia Zhangke, The Hedonists is a film imbued with that very dynamicism: tonally, narratively, and politically.
Opening with Jia's signature realism activated by security camera footage and sequences at a grim coal mine, the film soon takes viewers in unexpected directions leaning into comedy and almost absurdism in parts. The film lands a long way from where it begins, encapsulating the rapid change in contemporary China and its lasting impact on its people.
Reece Goodwin, Curator (Film & TV)